The Long Road
by Mistri Tonks' Admirer
Summary: One-Shot: September 2004 story challenge for Pinkhairgreeneyes. Dumbledore arranges for Harry to get to school, with Tonks as the only escort ...


**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This story contains references from all five books, mainly in flashbacks and memories. I own nothing but the plot and a few unknown characters that may pop up.

**Spoilers:** PS/SS, CoS, PoA, GoF and OotP.

**Explanatory Notes:** September Story Challenge for Pinkhairgreeneyes: Long Road. Any rating and no word count limit.

Despite the reprieve from Death Eater trouble since the DoM incident, Dumbledore arranges for Harry to get to school in an unusual, but safer way. Tonks is chosen to be the only escort. Too bad things never go as planned.

Required phrases in a story:

"If you think I'm doing that, you're mental."

"At this rate, I'll make it to school by seventh year."

**Rating:** PG-13 for suggestiveness.

**Thanks:** To Therealbe0t and Shamrock Holmes for their help in re-editing this for a lower rating. The higher rating is as always found at the Yahoo! Group Pinkhairgreeneyes.

**The Long Road   
By: Mistri, Cho's Observer, Tonks' Admirer**

Sunday, 1st September, 1996. 2:00 AM.

Harry looked at the round sphere. "This is a _what_ and we'll be using it for _what_?"

Tonks sighed and explained for the millionth time. "This is a Local Traveller Integrated Sphere Network. Dumbledore wants us to use it to get to Hogwarts. It's much safer and best yet, nobody will be able to attack us. The Death Eaters _have_ been quiet, true, but he will take no chances. I'm the only one coming with you; we can only put two people in there and I volunteered ... "

"Yeah, he doesn't want to lose the world's only hope," muttered Harry.

Deciding to ignore this for the moment, Tonks looked around the room. "Have we got our trunks?" Harry pointed to his, as Tonks quickly levitated hers to where his stood. "Wands?" Harry pulled his out of his holster for a moment, whilst Tonks put hers away in her own matching holster. "Hedwig?"

"Ginny's taking her for me so she doesn't have to fly," said Harry.

"Good. Well, get in."

"Now wait one minute! I am not doing it! Over my dead body will I do it," said Harry. "I am not travelling by that ... that ... whatever it is."

"Oh, come on, Harry," said Tonks. "If you want to sleep, you can sleep when you're in there. It drives itself." Rather than have Tonks go on at him, he grumbled and got in, by way of touching the side of the sphere and wishing for entrance. He landed inside, in a room with a huge bed, a bathroom and kitchen. The two trunks appeared, followed by Tonks, who surveyed the sphere and sighed.

"Are you ready to get going?" Harry grunted some non-committal answer, so Tonks waved her wand and they were off to Hogwarts.

Too tired to even worry about the fact that they had to share a bed, Tonks and Harry had gone to bed to sleep for a bit. And Harry dreamed about Tonks, nothing unusual there, he had been dreaming about her all summer. But what _was_ unusual was that Tonks was barely covered with a flimsy lace sheet and she was being very provocative. Normally, his dreams about her had just been bland and boring — you know, studying for Potions class or the like.

_'You can have whatever you want for breakfast, Harry,' Tonks said, casting him a come hither look._

'Anything?'

'You can even eat me,' said Tonks, laughing slightly. 'If you want. I taste so very good!'

Harry awoke from the dream with a half strangled gasp that fortunately didn't wake Tonks up. He took some deep calming breaths, trying to cool down from the imminent explosion and succeeded with relief, he didn't fancy having to explain to Tonks ... but very quickly his mind steered him away from that embarrassing thought. He looked outside, noting that it was just beginning to edge on dawn ... so they'd been travelling for about four hours, no more than five.

He took a closer look around the outside world and noted that in that time, they'd made it to just outside the front door of Number 12, Grimmauld Place.

"Slytherin's balls! At this rate, I'll make it to school by seventh year!"

This woke Tonks up. "Oh, don't worry," she said, correctly interpreting Harry's words. "It just looks like we've made a slow progression. We've actually gone quite a far way. Go have some breakfast, eat whatever you want."

This unconscious echoing of his dream caused Harry to freeze slightly and adjust himself as subtly as he could manage. "Anything?" he asked.

"Yes, anything," came Tonks' muffled voice as she settled back for a long sleep. "Just get it silently!" Harry went to the kitchen and made some toast, trying to analyse his feelings for Tonks and make sure whether it was something that might have long term relationship potential or if it was just general horniness.

He was interrupted by Tonks coming over in a very flimsy nightie that left nothing to the imagination. "Had breakfast?" she asked, her eyes panning over his pants and liking what she saw there. When he nodded somewhat dumbly, she looked outside, noting they were apparently on the steps of Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

"Well, I haven't had anything to eat," she said. "My mother always told me to have my meals at the table ... "

"The table's here," said Harry.

"Yeah, but my meal's not on it," said Tonks. "Oh well ... I suppose it won't hurt this once." And before Tonks could have any second thoughts on it, she was fulfilling a particular desire that she had nursed ever since meeting him and seeing how freaking hot he was. That being: to be the first female to have sexual contact with Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived.

And she knew she was the first; Harry's reactions were not the refined reactions of someone who has been through the ropes many times ... or even several times. For Harry's part, he just sat there, completely overwhelmed.

"Oh damn Merlin!!!" Harry managed as he saw Tonks' throat muscles work. "Tonks ... that was incredible."

"Glad you liked," she said. "Now, can you produce the same results with me?"

"Er ... most likely not," Harry said, before mentally slapping himself.

"Figures," muttered Tonks. "Well ... give it a shot anyway." She hopped onto the table and began to direct his work, ignoring the fact that this caused him to blush so much that it showed on his neck. He was a fast learner, she noted.

"Yes ... just like that ... a little faster ... SWEET MERLIN!" she screamed.

_Warning. Several systems have just been detected as malfunctioning. They have been malfunctioning since commencement of journey. We have been moving as fast as we seem to be; that is, a very small amount of space per second. Arrival at destination is estimated as sometime next year._

"_What?_" said Harry and Tonks together.

Wednesday, 1st January, 1997.

"Professor Dumbledore, where the hell are Harry and Tonks?" demanded Hermione.

"I cannot answer that, for I do not know. However, I have managed to ascertain that they took the secure transport. They are likely still in the secure transport," said Dumbledore.

"Is there no way we can communicate with them?"

"Not until the journey is ended."

Tonks was now seventeen weeks and three days pregnant. Unprotected sex can lead to unplanned for consequences. As far as they knew, they were in the middle of nowhere. So they led a happy life of eating regular, balanced meals, sleeping eight hours a day and having as much sex as was absolutely possible.

Harry thought they were happy.

Tonks thought they were happy.

So why did Tonks go all weird when Harry gave her an onion ring in lieu of a real one and proposed to her?

Harry didn't have a clue.

Tonks didn't have a clue.

Was it because Tonks felt she was tying him down with some kid/s that he might not want? Did Tonks feel responsible for not implementing some anticonception charm?

The weirdness dissolved to seconds of uneasy silence. The seconds turned to minutes, which turned to hours, which turned to days, which turned to weeks, which turned to months.

Yet this silence did not stop them from making mad, passionate, steamy, sweaty, wet, love to each other. Which only added to their confusion about what was wrong.

Sunday, 8th June, 1997.

Tonks was having a bitch of a day. She had woken six hours ago up in the beginning stages of labour. Harry was no help; he had no clue of what to do, but he was doing his best, inbetween flinching everytime Tonks cursed him out for impregnating her.

"Come on, Tonks!" A stray phrase from some old show entered his mind. "Bear down!" Tonks screamed more or less constantly as she bore down, eventually gasping as it suddenly became a lot easier as the head was out. Unfortunately, Harry had fainted.

"Bloody useless sod," Tonks muttered, clumsily performing all the post-birth duties. Harry woke up woozily, rubbing his aching head.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yes," said Tonks. "Look. We have a baby girl." As they watched, her hair turned red and her eyes green, before returning to black and blue.

"What was that?"

"It looked like Metamorphmagi ability," Tonks said. "But she's so young ... if she had it, it wouldn't be so obvious until she was at least six!" She changed the subject. "What should we name her?"

"I dunno," said Harry. "I never thought about it." Tonks and Harry sat in silence for a few minutes before Tonks could venture to make a suggestion.

"How about ... Lily? Lily Andromeda?" And so it was settled.

Sunday, 24th August, 1997.

"As you are all aware, our attempts at getting Harry to Hogwarts without being attacked last year somehow went wrong," said Snape. "I have since found a spell that may or may not remove them from where they are. It assumes, of course, that something went wrong with the mode of transport and they are still in it, regardless of whether they are travelling or not."

"And if they aren't?" said Ron.

"Then the spell will not work," said Snape. "I realise, Weasley, that it may not work at all. However, it still remains our best chance of getting them back that we have thus found." Silence greeted this. "Then, Miss Granger, Headmaster, you may perform the spell. The incantion is _Translatio L'Travel_."

As one, Albus and Hermione performed the spell.

Harry, Tonks and Lily were blinded temporarily by a bright flash of light, which did not die away, but remained as the spell tried to take them to where it was being cast. Their senses became mingled and entwined around each other as they struggled to stay together, a battle that Lily quickly lost as Harry and Tonks felt her thread of existence coil and disappear.

They were too stunned to express anything at this turn of events as they felt their threads of existence begin to cease existence, a process somewhat slowed as they felt what remained of their daughter settle itself into them, giving them more chance to endure. Even so, it was not much help and soon they found themselves struggling again.

"Harry ... "

"Tonks!"

"Take me ... live ... and destroy him ... "

"What?" But Harry soon realised what Tonks meant as he felt her very essence grow within him, passing into him instead of onto the next great adventure. The next thing he saw was that he was on his back staring at a ceiling, clutching Tonks' hand in his right, Lily's in his left. 

"Oh, sweet Mother of God," murmered a voice that Harry tentatively identified as Hermione's. Harry rose to a sitting position, looking at Tonks' limp form on the floor. He knew she was dead. Reflexively, he brushed his hand over her eyes, closing them.

"Harry?" asked another voice, this time Ron's. Harry made no response, picking up Lily, placing her on Tonks' chest, with her mother's arms around her. Summoning a pair of scissors, he methodically cut a lock of hair from each body, then pressed a kiss to Tonks' mouth.

He stood up, tucking the locks of hair away.

"What happened?" asked Ginny, her voice scared and faint.

"Your spell was killing us. They gave their lives so I could live," Harry said mechanically, before kneeling down again and taking their bodies into his arms.

"Harry — " began Albus.

"Don't," said Harry, in a voice so cold it would have frozen nitrogen. "Just don't. I'm leaving. I don't want anything to do with your stupid war. I'm going somewhere, far far away."

"Harry, please listen," said Albus.

"If you think I'm doing that, you're mental," Harry said.

And Harry Apparated away, taking the bodies of his daughter and his beloved with him.


End file.
